Good content marketing is strategically done and written well.

Content marketing sometimes gets a bad wrap because people (or at least small business owners) don’t have time or don’t know what it is.

Content marketing is writing content to educate your audience. It is sharing ideas to help them understand and expanding their horizons with your expertise.

Some content marketing, though, needs to be revised. Here are 5 ways to take your content marketing from good to great.

Plan It Out

We write blogs for many clients here and we love it. Why? Because we’re organized and that makes things flow better. We have a spreadsheet of dates we’re going to publish along with the title of the blog. We also plan out the content and photos for the blogs. We purchase photos beforehand so when it’s time to post the blog everything is set and ready to go.

Why is this important? Simple, because it takes less time to plan everything out than it does to do it all in random, sporadic spurts. Believe us, we’ve tried it that way and it doesn’t work. We take a day at the beginning of the month to plan the titles, photos and blog posts. Then each week we pick a day and write the posts for the next week. After they’re approved and edited we post them and schedule them out.

Use Other Content

One misconception to having great content marketing is that you ONLY need to write blogs. Nope, this is another myth. Content marketing can be white papers, case studies, infographics or any other piece of material you create to extend your content.

We tend to do an infographic for Pinterest each time we write a blog. This way our content goes on multiple channels. I post my blog to my LinkedIn page too through the publisher (not post) button. If you do this, the blog also ‘lives’ on LinkedIn and it is ‘shouted out’ to all of your followers.

Write About Enticing Topics

Even though this sounds like common sense, a lot of people don’t think this part out. They write about things that seem so easy and simple to them but they make it too complicated for the layperson to understand.

When we’re writing blogs for clients, we put ourselves in the consumer’s shoes (sometimes we’re already consumers so this works well) and we think of what they would want to know and what they would need help with.

Another trick to doing this is doing keyword research on your brand or product’s industry. To do this you’ll go to Google Adwords and click on the Tools. When you’re there you’ll click on the Keyword Planner and enter in keywords you think people would type in to find you. If you’re a cupcake company you would type in:

• Birthday party items
• Cupcakes
• Celebration cakes
• Birthday cakes
• Cupcakes (and your location)

This will enable you to get started on your ideas for the topics you’ll want to write about to be relatable.

Do Something Different

We write for a roofer here in Orlando and we needed to come up with some other keywords that would be a great fit for their industry. We know that roofing isn’t the sexiest of companies to write about, however, we still want people to read it and look over other blogs.

We came up with the idea to pinpoint roofs that are fun and different. We found homes and businesses that were shaped like a shoe and a seashell, among others. We wrote a blog centered around this and showed the creative side of roofing; one which we’re sure people don’t think about regularly.

Photo from www.hainesshoehouse.com

If you’re working on your content marketing or need help with it give us a ring. We offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation to go over your business and your goals.

Need help with your marketing? Let’s chat!